Goog News . . . Bad News
I was critical about DRM in a previous post. Worse than failed DRM is the means of enforcing it. This involved lawsuits and a lot of hurt feeling. Well now there’s good news and bad news:
The Good news:
The Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) has decided to stop suing people.
If you don’t know the RIAA are the ones who have dragged people into court for downloading music. They don’t know what they are doing. This is classic weak interface issue. The ones who are downloading know how to use the internet but the group chasing them has no idea how to find them. Instead of intelligently asking a person who knows how the internet and downloading work they decided to sue anyone they thought they could find.
Suing everyone they could find included:
- a teenager
(src: http://www.1010wins.com/pages/193237.php?contentType=4&contentId=298727)
- an 83 year old DEAD woman
(src: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/05/riaa_sues_the_dead/)
- even XM radio!
(src: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/17/0250238&from=rss)
There’s even a blog of lawyer who specifically deals with the RIAA nonsense I suggest you give it a read: http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/
Even if you win a RIAA lawsuit, as almost everyone has, the time, money, and energy you put into it are irreplacable.
So the idea that they are going to stop suing people is great. After millions of dollars waste and countless hours of the judicial system down the drain they have stopped. Yeah.
Why am I not more excited well be cause of…
The Bad News:
The Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) has decided to conspire with internet service providers(ISP).
Your ISP, the folks you pay for internet access are going to police you. I don’t know how this will play into privacy but you should know that the RIAA has asked them to watch you. Here’s why it is bad. VERY BAD.
“The new plan circumvents the law, and puts the power directly into RIAA’s hands, which means that more innocent people than ever will get harassed by the RIAA.”
(src: http://techgossip.net/2008/12/riaas-new-piracy-plan-cuts-off-people-without-a-fair-trial/)
In the near future the intrnet you pay for will now be watched for what “looks like” illegal activity.
Knowing how computers work I suspect some of the speed you pay for will go towards watching you. As for me if I pay for it I should own it. If you cut my speed to watch me you better charge a lot less.
And who knows what they will flag as suspicious? What about get large emails from friends who send pictures? (this happens often) Or what about large files I send my self from my job? The very subjective standard of “suspicious activity” is a slippery slope towards controlling what you are allowed to see and do online.
Think about all this and let me know what you think.
Till next time….